On Wednesday night, CNBC's social media team stuck around the newsroom to help bring debate-related tweets to TV sets around the world. Needless to say, the crew saw many different kinds of posts. One, though, was an instant winner.
Twitter user Andrew Pak tweeted, "Obama and Romney should settle this through a Pokemon battle." A Pokemon battle is a form a competition between Nintendo's popular pocket monsters that are collected by gaming fans. After passing through two sets of editorial eyes, Pak's tweet made it to air.
Little did the social team know, it would travel speedily across the internet.
The visual was posted to the front page of Reddit, a social news website, and received nearly 20,000 votes and hundreds of comments. One fan named BoosterSilver wrote, “Haven't laughed so hard in a while. Thanks!” The news also made it to Tumblr, a microblogging platform and social networking website, where it saw more than 59,000 notes.
Blogger Daniel Luu posted a cartoon image to Reddit revealing President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in intense battle. Romney was shown using “Pay Day” as his Pokemon’s weapon.
Reddit user AWildSketchAppeared took to pencil to draw up the battle scene. There, Romney would mimic Obama’s move of “Splash Attack,” a weapon used by a Pokemon water monster.
The most popular photo was from BuzzFeed's Tumblr, which displayed an animated battle scene graphic. Obama and Romney were seen standing at debate podiums, each in possession of exploding Pokemon balls. This animation saw over 20,000 reactions.
The team is looking forward to the Vice Presidential Debate. Rumor has it that viewers will see Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan duel it out with light sabers.
— Written by CNBC's Eli Langer. Follow him on Twitter at @EliLanger.
